IPad

Many people, young and old, complain about how technology is doing this or that to their lives. Writers bemoan the loss of real connections, or whatever they think people did before phones/the Internet/computers ruined everything.

“In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time,” Pico Iyer wrote. “The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.”

Here are the simple rules:

Don’t Be A Di*k During Meals With Friends

The first person to crack and look at their phone picks up the check. Our (initial) purpose of the game was to get everyone off the phones free from Twitter/Facebook/texting and to encourage conversations.

Rules of the Game:

The game starts after everyone has ordered.

Everybody places their phone on the table face down.

The first person to flip over their phone loses the game.

Loser of the game pays for the bill.

If the bill comes before anyone has flipped over their phone everybody is declared a winner and pays for their own meal.

That seems like about the right level of social conditioning necessary to make people think about their technology use. Not soulful wailing, but collective ribbing.